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Wall Street Journal asks Does the Fed store 6200 tonnes of gold?

On August 10, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an article about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) custody gold and the NY Fed’s gold vault. This vault is located under the New York Fed’s headquarters at 33 Liberty in Manhattan, New York City.

The article, titled “The Fed Has 6,200 Tons of Gold in a Manhattan Basement – Or Does It?”, can be read on the subscription only WSJ site here, but is also viewable in full on both the Fox News Business and MorningStar websites, here and here. It also appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal print edition on Friday, August 11.

The NY Fed offers a ‘custody gold’ storage service to its customers, customers which are exclusively foreign central banks and international financial institutions, except notably, the US Treasury is also a gold storage customer of the NY Fed. The Fed’s gold vault, which is on level E (the lowest level) of its basement area under its downtown Manhattan headquarters, open in 1924, and has been providing a gold storage service for foreign central banks since at least the mid-1920s. Custody gold means that the NY Fed stores the gold on behalf of its customers in the role of custodian, and the gold is supposed to be stored on an allocated and segregate basis, i.e. “Earmarked gold”.

NY Fed stored gold has risen in public consciousness over the last few years arguably because of recent Bundesbank gold repatriation operations from New York as well as also similar gold repatriation from the central bank of the Netherlands. The moves by the Chinese and Russian central banks to actively increasing their gold reserves have also put focus on whether the large traditional central bank / official sector gold holders (such as Germany, Italy and the International Monetary Fund) have all the gold that they claim to have, much of which is supposedly stored at the NY Fed vault.

The main theme of the August 10 WSJ piece, as per the title, is whether the NY Fed actually stores all the gold in the vault that its claims to store, a theme which it introduced as follows:

The WSJ article intersperses a number of facts about this custody gold alongside various quotes, and while I cannot speak for anyone else quoted in the article, the quotes could probably best be described as being on the sceptical side of the NY Fed’s official claims.

Since I am quoted in the article, it seems appropriate to cover it here on the BullionStar website. The relevant section is as follows:

‘But “no one at all can be sure the gold is really there except Fed employees with access,” said Ronan Manly, a precious-metals analyst at gold dealer BullionStar in Singapore. If it is all there, he said, the central bank has “never in its history provided any proof.”

Mr. Manly is among gold aficionados who wonder if the bank is hiding something about what it’s hiding.’

Let me begin by explaining the basis of my quote.

The only reporting which the New York Fed engages in for the custody gold recorded as being held on behalf of its customers (central banks and official sector organizations) is a single number communicated each month (with a 1 month lag) on Federal Reserve table 3.13 – “Selected Foreign Official Assets Held at Federal Reserve Banks” and listed as “Earmarked Gold”.

As of the end of July 2017, the Fed reported that it was holding $7.84 billion of “Earmarked Gold” in foreign and international accounts. This amount is a valuation at the official US Treasury / Fed price of gold of US $42.22 per fine troy ounce, and which works out at approximately 5775 tonnes of gold.

The reason that this figure differs from the ~6200 tonnes number quoted by the Wall Street Journal is that it doesn’t include 416 tonnes of US treasury gold also claimed to be stored in the NY fed vaults. When the US Treasury claimed quantity is added, the figure comes to 6191 tonnes, hence the WSJ citation of circa 6200 tonnes.

NY Fed Gold – Opacity and Secrecy

Other than that, the Federal Reserve does not publicly communicate any other relevant information or details about the quantity of custody gold bars said to be stored in its vault, and furthermore, the Fed has never in its history publicly communicated any such relevant details or information.

So it is a fact that the Federal Reserve has “never in its history provided any proof” that all the gold it claims is there is really there, hence the quote is factual, and hence the connected quote that “no one at all can be sure the gold is really there except Fed employees with access” is a valid conclusion also.

– details of the names of the central banks and international financial institutions that it claims to hold gold on behalf of

– details of how much gold is held by each customer

– details of whether any of the gold stored in the vault is under lien, claim encumbrance or other title

– details of whether any of the custody gold is lent or swapped

– details of location swaps and / or purity swaps of gold bars between the NY Fed vaults and other central bank or commercial bank vaults around the world

– details of the fact that nearly all of the gold bars supposedly held in the NY Fed vault are a combination of old US Assay office gold bars and low grade coin bars made from melted coins

The NY fed has never allowed the conduct of any independent physical gold bar audits or published any results of its own audits. It has never published any gold bar weights lists (note one weight list for some US Treasury gold bars stored at the NY Fed vault made it into the public domain in 2011 as part of documentation that was submitted to a ‘Investigate the US Gold’ hearing in front of the US House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services. That weight list starts on page 132 of the pdf which can be accessed here.

Mainstream Media Cheerleaders and Detractors

The lack of transparency of the New York Fed as regards the custody gold that it stores for its central bank customers is therefore a valid point. The Wall Street Journal article of August 10 is merely highlighting this valid point. However, predictably this did not stop some mainstream US media critics from denouncing the WSJ article such as can be seen in the following tweet from a POLITICO ‘chief economic correspondent‘.

In which the WSJ takes seriously the lunatics who think the NY Fed is lying about what's in its vaults. https://t.co/83LsDN4ApP

I would wager that this Ben White chap has never asked the New York Fed any serious questions about its custody gold, preferring instead to throw around tweets using accusatory language such as ‘lunatics’. But this sort of reaction is par for the course from elements of the cheerleading US mainstream media, who seem to feel an obligation to protect the Fed and the status quo of the incumbent central bank led financial system from any valid criticism.

However, I have asked the NY Fed serious questions about its custody gold.

– the number of central banks and official sector institutions that have gold in storage with the NY Fed in Manhattan.

– the identities of these central banks / official sector institutions that have gold in storage.

– could FRBNY CBIAS / Account Relations provide me with gold bar weight lists for the gold holdings that these central banks and official sector institutions hold with the NY Fed?

As the first query went unanswered, I then resubmitted the query a month later in mid-March. On neither occasion did the Fed respond or acknowledge the request. Realistically, I didn’t expect the NY Fed to answer, since they have track record of being aloof and unanswerable to anyone but their own stakeholders, however, the outcome of the emails has established that the NY Fed does not engage on this issue nor provide any transparency in this area to the public.

Conclusion

I had expected the WSJ article to be a lot longer and more in-depth than it actually was, and to obtain some publishable response from the NY Fed. The WSJ however says in the article that:

“The Fed declined to comment”

The lack of any quotation by the Fed within the WSJ article is a glaring omission, and actually proves the complete lack of cooperation by the Fed on the entire topic of gold bar storage. The WSJ article does say that it filed Freedom of Information (FOIA) Requests with the NY Fed, which again underscores that without FOIAs, the Fed wouldn’t voluntarily reveal anything.

What these Freedom of Information requests actually contained is not, however, even revealed by the WSJ, except hilariously in one passing reference to “a heavily redacted tour guide manual“. Hilarious in the sense that the NY Fed would even see fit to heavily redact a simple tour-guide manual. To quote the WSJ:

‘The Wall Street Journal filed Freedom-of-Information requests with the New York Fed. Among the Journal’s findings, from a heavily redacted tour-guide manual provided by the Fed: Tour guides are informed that “visitors are excitable” and should be asked to “please keep their voices down.”‘

Why doesn’t the Wall Street Journal do a full publication of all the NY Fed FOIA responses that it received and publish them on its website? This at least would be some sort of backup evidence to the published article.

There are a multitude of angles that the Wall Street Journal could cover if it wanted to do a proper investigation into the gold bars supposedly stored in the NY Fed vault below 33 Liberty on Manhattan Island.

For example:

Why did the German Bundesbank take multiple years to transfer back a small portion of the gold that it claimed to have held at the NY Fed vaults, with much of that gold having to be recast / remelted into new bars en route to Frankfurt in Germany. If the gold was allocated and segregated to the Bundesbank account at the NYFed, there would have been no reason for the multi-year transfer delays and no reason to need to melt down and recast any gold bars.

Why did low-grade coin bars start turning up in the NY Fed vaults from 1968 onwards? The only place they could have come from is Fort Knox in Kentucky. The fact that these low-grade coin bars had to be used suggests there was not enough high-grade gold bars (995 US assay office Good Delivery gold bars) to satisfy central bank customer requirements at the NY Fed vault at that times. Some of these coins bars were over time shifted out of the NY Fed vaults and refined into high-grade bars and sent to the Bank of England in London. How much coin bar gold is still in the NY Fed vault.

For the 3 largest claimed gold holders at the NY Fed, which are the Banca d’Italia, the Bundesbank and the International Monetary Fund, and which between supposedly hold at least 4000 tonnes of gold at the NY Fed, there is no way to validate the accuracy of any of these holdings, neither from IMF, Bundesbank or Banca d’Italia sources, nor from the NY Fed. These gold holdings have, on paper, not changed since the early 1970s, but thats over 40 years ago and there is no way to check the accuracy of these 3 holdings which make up the lions share of all the gold supposedly held at the NYFed.

Why is there a tunnel between the NY Fed level E basement gold vault to the Chase Manhattan Plaza level B5 basement gold vault across the street? i.e. Why is a central bank vault linked to a commercial vault run by a commercial bank (JP Morgan Chase)?

Does, or has the JP Morgan / Chase in the past, facilitated the activation of NY Fed stored central bank gold into the commercial gold market via movements of gold bars from 33 Liberty to Chase Manhattan Plaza vaults?

Why is there no mention in the Wall Street Journal article of the NY Fed’s Auxiliary vault which was built in 1963 and its location, and which supposedly stores gold bars in a “wall of gold”. Was this not newsworthy?

Why did the 2004 version of the NY Fed gold vault brochure ‘The Key to the Gold Vault’ state that gold bars “belonging to some 60 foreign central banks and international monetary organizations” were stored at the NY Fed vault, and then the 2008 version of the same brochure had changed this statement to gold “belonging to some 36 foreign governments, central banks and official international organizations”.

Why the drop from 60 customers to 36 customers. I have heard from a very reliable senior ex-NY Fed executive that some central banks were unhappy to keep their gold in Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11 and wanted it stored elsewhere. You wouldn’t blame then given what happened to the Scotia gold vaults under the WTC 4 on 9/11.

Why does the NY Fed decline to comment for a Wall Street Journal article? Surely this should ring alarm bells at the Wall Street Journal?